Home From Within (37 page)

“Oh. Where’s your mother?”

“She died giving birth to me,” her mother said and then looked out onto the street at a passing car.

“I’m sorry,” said Jessica, feeling her eyes start to tear.

Her mother shrugged, and Jessica detected a slight remove from the conversation.

“Who raised you then?” Jessica asked.

Her mother kept her eyes on the street. “My grandmother. Sometimes my father, but he was much too busy working. I’m afraid I didn’t have very good mothering.”

She fixed her eyes sternly on Jessica. “My grandmother never wanted my father to marry my mother and resented my presence. Of course, I’m reading into it, but that’s how I saw it.”

Jessica felt empathy, imagining her mother as a baby and toddler not getting the love and affection she needed to thrive.

“When I met your father, he was so strong and solid. I felt I didn’t have to worry about a thing when he was around; he could provide me with what I needed.”

“Love?” Jessica blurted.

“Yes, love. But in his way. Your father had been through a lot; we both had.”

“What did Dad go through?”

Her mother’s face lifted up and gestured toward Jessica’s truck. “You have to go back to find that answer out. Talk to Lodi.”

Damn,
Jessica thought,
so close.
This was the first time her mother had expounded on the past, and Jessica was grateful for the long drive back so she could let the words and image fully sink in. Certain events could never be unstitched from her heart, but Jessica felt moved to soften their mother-daughter relationship, knowing how limited her mother’s parental qualities were because of the way she was raised. Jessica decided, in an absurd way, to be a loving parent toward her mother’s limited qualities.

Jessica loped up the steps and, to her mother’s surprise, bent down to fully embrace her. After a few uncomfortable seconds, her mother pulled her arm around Jessica’s waist and patted it.

“I hope you’ll be coming back to this home more often,” she said.

Jessica released her mother and smiled. “That would be nice.”

The drive to the UP was filled with new songs that engulfed Jessica’s truck. She visualized how she could earn Matt’s trust back by creating scenes in her mind of the words, the looks, and the touch they would exchange in order to share a life together again. Her insides were like high beams with a blazing focus on her future; Matt had to be in it.

After five hours on the road, Jessica pulled into the cheese store Matt loved on the outskirts of town. It was a small building that was painted yellow with a huge wooden slab of holey cheese on the roof. Matt loved the mustard dips for pretzels and, of course, the beef sticks and cheese curds. He would munch on them in front of the television, especially when the Green Bay Packers’ season was in full swing. The act of purchasing the items sent pangs of loneliness through Jessica’s heart, and the only thoughts that rolled through her mind when she paid the cashier were,
please let me be forgiven.

Aunt Lodi’s grass and gravel driveway felt extra rough as she rolled over it and parked. Jessica felt a flash of contentment seeing Aunt Lodi step onto the front porch to greet her with hugs and kisses, but Aunt Lodi’s face, a mix of sympathy and disappointment, slammed the situation back into focus.

Once Jessica got settled into her former bedroom, unpacking all the items Matt brought over, she searched through the suitcase for any note, any evidence that Matt still loved her. All she found was a tarnished penny and a tiny seashell. The last time the suitcase had been used was when she, Matt, and Paulina had toured a college campus by Lake Superior. They took a walk on the beach and collected a few shells to bring back home.

Jessica placed the shell and penny on the dresser and climbed on top of the bed, setting her eyes on the objects as if they held the answer to her woes.

The rest of the night, she pumped Aunt Lodi for information about Matt.

“How did he look when he dropped off the suitcase? Did he sound mad? Did he say anything specific?”

“For Christ’s sake, Jessica, I already told you everything I may have seen, thought I saw, and what I saw.”

“Sorry. I’m just trying to figure this out.”

“I know,” Aunt Lodi said, then reached for her hand from across the dinner table. “He said when he’s ready to talk he’ll call you. It’s your turn for patience.”

Jessica texted Paulina that night, being extra cautious that nothing in her text would bring about suspicion. Paulina texted back that she was worried Matt was sick because he was not himself. Jessica swallowed hard and agreed he may have a cold but to not worry about it because everything will be fine. Paulina ended the text asking when Jessica was coming home; maybe her return would help Matt feel better.

During the next couple of days, Jessica purposefully filled her daytime hours with so much activity that at night she would crash into bed, hoping to sleep through without self-torment. It didn’t work. Her brain and body would move back and forth wrestling as if she were in the ring with two guys called guilt and shame. She returned to her normal work schedule, jumping at the chance for overtime, begging Jean to give her one of her shifts, just so she would not have to think.

Not wanting to fall into a pattern of secrecy, Jessica had a heart-to-heart with Jean the day after her return to the UP.

“Oh my,” Jean said after Jessica shared her story. “Well, you sure know how to make life interesting.”

Jessica tried to smile, but it turned into a frown. “Do you believe I love Matt and the life we created?”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” Jean looked down at her folded hands set in front of her on the kitchen table. “I suppose you needed to know where you belonged. Although, I would not have taken it quite so far.”

Jessica nodded in agreement. “Thanks for listening and not hating me.”

“Oh sure,” Jean said. “I may not agree with what you did, but I am your friend.”

After a wet embrace, Jean reached over for some Kleenex on the counter. “Now how are we going to get Matt back?”

Jessica was unsure how to proceed forward, so Jean suggested a heartfelt letter, maybe with a song attached.

Every night in bed, Jessica searched for a song that expressed the lyrical unity she could not convey in person. After another session of interrupted sleep, Jessica decided one song would not express her feelings properly; she would gather many. Grabbing her laptop off the floor, she started searching for love songs.
This is it. This is the song,
Jessica announced one after another in the darkness of her bedroom as she continuously pressed the repeat button, listening to the songs with her eyes closed, wrapped under the warmth of her covers until the alarm went off.

During breakfast, with Aunt Lodi still in heavy sleep, Jessica sketched out a rough draft of a letter with the love songs from last night singing the overture. The songs made her feel quite empty at times, but Jessica partnered with the lyrics and her thoughts flowed onto the paper beneath her hand.

At work that day, Jessica thought she saw Matt’s truck sitting idle in the parking lot of the pharmacy. Jessica’s heart banged with hope and her netted mind started to untangle, but as she approached the door to go outside, the truck pulled away.

Later that night Paulina made an unexpected visit to Aunt Lodi’s. As soon as she was spotted pulling into the driveway, they ran to take their places in the makeshift hospital ward. Aunt Lodi was in bed with rotations of ice and heat packs while Jessica tended to her needs.

They sat around Aunt Lodi’s bed, gobbling up apple slices and laughing about old stories. Paulina begged Jessica to find her old blankie in Aunt Lodi’s storage closet.

“That thing was a choking hazard,” Aunt Lodi recalled. “Remember how torn up it was? We found it had wrapped around your neck one night, and we said ‘That’s it for blankie.’”

“I loved blankie,” Paulina announced. “And you guys tried to replace it with that teddy bear, but I wouldn’t have it.”

“Yeah, remember when Matt and I were dating and he babysat Paulina one night?” asked Jessica.

“That’s right. After he left, we looked in on you and you had it wrapped around your body,” Aunt Lodi said.

Jessica reached over and poked at Paulina to tickle her in the stomach. “You made him believe that blankie was something you slept with every night, even though it was in a box in the storage closet.”

The girls laughed and Aunt Lodi pretended that laughing hurt but still did it anyway. After a few minutes of Paulina begging, Jessica finally got up to get a flashlight and search the storage closet for blankie. Jessica could hear Aunt Lodi and Paulina laughing from the bedroom about some other stunt Paulina pulled on Matt. As Jessica read the scribble of writing on the boxes, she lifted her eyes to one in the very corner of the top shelf. It was not like the others; it had a weathered, older look to it. Jessica stood on her tiptoes and tapped it with an outreached finger. It was heavy and slipped back a little. Jessica decided to pull a stool from the bathroom so she could reach it, even though she had glanced at another box with the words Paulina’s Blankie on it.

On the stool, Jessica was now eye level with the box.

“Did you find it yet?” yelled Paulina from the bedroom. “I need my blankie.”

“Almost,” Jessica yelled back.

Holding the flashlight in her left hand, she dusted the top of the box with her right one and aimed light at the writing on the lid. “From Jim” was written in black faded ink. Jessica started to quiver, almost afraid she may not want to uncover the contents of the box. Her mind was a flurry of the past her father made her believe—maybe old bones of Ermaline and Walker. Jessica lifted the lid slightly and shined the light in. The box contained Mace, pepper spray, old sticks that had been whittled into daggers, even a rustic butter knife. Jessica lowered the lid quickly upon hearing footsteps and jumped off the stool just as Paulina stepped into the storage room. Jessica grabbed and with one motion threw the box with “Blankie” written on it at Paulina.

“Hey, what are you trying to do, take my head off?”

“Sorry. You scared me,” Jessica said, out of breath.

Paulina stared at her for a second and then turned her attention back to the memories of her youth.

In bed that night, waiting until Aunt Lodi was snoring, Jessica found herself excavating the contents of the old box. She had sneaked into the closet, seized the box, and brought it to her bedroom, locking the door behind.

After laying a bath towel on her bed, she proceeded to remove the weapons, one by one, placing them in the order for which she believed they were given. The Mace and pepper spray were easy because of the dates on the canister; the sticks were another matter. While studying one after another Jessica came to the conclusion, as with anyone who practiced a skill, her father became more proficient at making the tips of his daggers and knives pointy, so that some were quite dangerous if jammed into the right fleshy part on the body. She placed the handmade weapons in order of proficiency. The older pieces were quite battle scarred, uneven and notched out in some spots, and hardly had the ability to do harm. But ones made with acquired skill were so intricately carved that on one she believed her father’s initials were etched into the hind-quarters of a bear on the handle, the blade smooth and long. Jessica studied it with her eyes and hands, turning it over and over, holding it to feel the power of its lethality and to hypothesize why it was made.

C
hapter
29

After stopping at a local coffee shop, Jessica drove to her favorite spot on the marina to watch the water wrinkle against the sand. Dangling her legs over the wooden slabs, she rested her head on the tall post that held the pier in place. The sun was milling around the horizon with a crisp breeze whisking through Jessica’s semi-wet hair. The word she attached to herself was melancholy. Sometimes she and Matt would come to this spot with sandwiches in hand and have a lunch date, usually on a day Paulina was in school. Matt would surprise her at work, and they would take her break on the pier. Jessica’s memories whirled around their moments together but the wood dagger in her hand from last night crept into her thoughts. Now that the lid was lifted off the box, the knives, daggers, and Mace were not going to slip away so casually. Jessica started thinking about why her father made those and gifted them to Aunt Lodi. In fact, why did he give her gifts that only had to do with safety and protection?